Alice Barnes and Anne Yelsey cannot be stopped.

The duo claimed the Pac-10 doubles crown this weekend, taking home the same top honors they earned last year. Senior Barnes and junior Yelsey, the top-ranked doubles team in the country, defeated 11th-ranked Suzi Babos and Zsuzsanna Fodor of California, 8-4.

“It’s nice to come in as the top seed,” Barnes said. “There’s a lot of expectation there, but that’s alright. We’re fine with that because we expect a lot of ourselves. We expect to win. We didn’t play our absolute best tennis, but we won it so that’s fine.”

“It wasn’t the best we played,” Yelsey concurred. “We served well, but our returns were a little bit off. It was enough to get the job done, though.”

On the way to the championship match, the pair knocked out Elizabeth Lumpkin and Alex McGoodwin of UCLA and No. 21 Roxanne Clarke and Kady Pooler of Arizona State — the only doubles team Barnes and Yelsey lost to during the regular season. They had a bye in the opening round.

“I was pretty pleased about the fact that we beat the ASU pair in the semis,” Barnes said. “You don’t want people with two wins over you, so we set the record straight.”

This is actually the third time Barnes has won the Pac-10 doubles championship; she partnered with Erin Burdette, Class of ‘05, to do so in 2004. That same pairing won the NCAA doubles championship the following year — but individual achievement is not what the duo are seeking. Rather, they want to perform well for the team.

“The win today was important to get momentum for the team event, not so much for the individual NCAA competitions,” Barnes said. “It’s really important, especially when you get into NCAAs, to get that doubles point. The only time the team has lost, in my opinion, was because we lost the doubles points.”

Sophomore Lejla Hodzic and Nguyen also competed in the double championship draw. They beat Sabrina Capannolo and Jessica Leitch of ASU in the first round, but then lost to Babos and Fodor in the second.

In singles action, freshman Jessica Nguyen was the runner-up in the invitational draw. She dropped the finals match to Ashley Joelson of UCLA, 3-6, 6-2, 3-6.

“It was a tough tournament, but it was nice to get to play singles matches, since I didn’t get to that much this season,” Nguyen said. “It was good for experience. I played really well in the semifinals, but I am a little rusty. Today was just a long match and we were both really tired. Her style of play is that she’s a defensive player. I was on offense the whole time, and then she just pulled through”

The Cardinal had less success in the singles championship draw, despite their heavy representation in the field. Three players from each of nine Pac-10 schools get bids to the championship draw; a coaches committee selects five additional players to round out the 32-athlete field. This year, two of those at-large bids went to Stanford players so that the Cardinal’s second through sixth courts were all represented in the championship draw. Senior Amber Liu, who plays at the No. 1 position, did not participate at Ojai.

Barnes, ranked fourth in the ITA rankings, advanced the furthest, but lost 6-3, 2-6, 2-6 to 10th-ranked Amanda Fink of USC in the semifinals. Barnes beat Fink three weeks ago at Stanford and has been the singles runner-up at Ojai the past two years.

“One of the biggest problems was I didn’t serve that well,” Barnes said of her Saturday loss. “But she’s a good player, she played well, she beat me, that’s fine. It’s . not such a big deal that a Stanford player didn’t win it. I’m certainly not worried; it’s the team event that matters. If we play USC in the team event, we’ll beat them. We’ll be ready for NCAAs, which is what matters.”

Yelsey and junior Theresa Logar lost in the quarterfinals round of the singles championship draw. Sophomore Celia Durkin lost to Fink in the second round, and sophomore Whitney Deason lost in the first round but won her match in the back draw.

Compared to last year, when all four Cardinal players entered in the singles championship draw advanced to the quarterfinals and three made it to the semifinals, the overall performance of the team at the individual competition could be seen as somewhat of a disappointment. Barnes, however, fiercely disputed this idea.

“It doesn’t really matter,” she said. “We still won t he overall tournament title, based on total team points from the weekend. It was not such a dominant performance like last year, but that’s OK. We have a couple people injured, and [Nguyen] did well in the invitational. In general, I thought we did fine.

Barnes repeatedly emphasized the importance of the team event at NCAAs, which kicks off at Stanford on May 12.

“Over the years, sometimes we’ve had a good Ojai and sometimes we haven’t. You can’t tell from Ojai how we’re going to do at NCAAs. One thing’s for sure — we have a lot of players who are totally completely focused on the team event, which is what I’d much rather have. Other schools have players who are focused on the individual glory of Ojai, but we care much more about the team event.”